


spurious beauties and excellencies

by pseudocitrus



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: First Time, Fluff and Smut, M/M, and self-indulgent as friCK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 02:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8472193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: No one seems to find all this touching unusual at all, even though the mere thought of anyone thinking so is enough to make Yuri feel like he’s replaced his face with a pool of lava.





	

**Author's Note:**

> self-indulgent fluff thing written with the feels from after episode 2 ///// i…i love victuuri -sobs-
> 
> note: after ep5 events, i realized i may have misinterpreted something about the eros routine;;; but, i’ve decided to leave this story the way i started writing it originally, with my mistaken understanding of how yuri was positioning/seeing himself in that eros narrative. :');;;
> 
> …i hope you're having a good day!!

Everything is really great, of course! He has — um — absolutely nothing to complain about! At all!

It’s…

It’s just —

“Alright!” Victor cheers. “It’s here!”

He’s dressed in the onsen’s yukata again, and clapping, so vigorously the yukata’s collar is starting to loosen over one collarbone. Glowing, Yuri’s mother sets the bowls down, one in front of Victor and one in front of Yuri. The smell of it, for a moment, distracts Yuri; he feels his face flush with delight.

It’s his first celebratory katsudon in a long, long, _long_  time.

“Thank you,” Yuri says, and his mother nods, and says, smiling, “Welcome back, Yuri,” and when Yuri goes for the chopsticks, prepared to bury himself into his food — his fingertips only scrape against the table.

That’s when it happens.

Victor reaches. He grasps Yuri’s hand. The contact is like setting a lighter to his fingertips; heat shoots straight up to Yuri’s face in a way he prays is unnoticeable and understands hopelessly is as clear as day. Victor turns Yuri’s hand palm upward and smacks a set of chopsticks into it.

“Good work,” Victor tells him warmly, and Yuri swallows. His hands pretend to have a great deal of trouble straightening the chopsticks out.

“Th…thank you.”

He glances at the people assembled around him; but if they noticed anything, they’re much, much better than him at hiding it. He stares down at the katsudon. His mouth is watering, inconsolably. He swallows again.

“You know, maybe…maybe I should change, first?” He fidgets, and the fidgets glisten cheerfully with the help of all the sequins sewn into the costume that, in the effervescence of reporters and fans and the parade back to the onsen, he’s still not had the chance to remove.

“Oh! Right, right, maybe you should —”

“You wouldn’t want to spill on it —”

“Here, Yuri, let’s just go right over —”

“NO!”

Victor’s voice booms past everyone else's. He points.

“Eat it now, Yuri!”

“B-but, your costume — I might —”

“It doesn’t matter,” Victor announces. “What’s more important is Pavlov’s dog.”

“P-Pavlov’s —?”

“We have to build the connection in you,” Victor explains. “When you succeed, you’ll eat katsudon. We’ll do it over and over until even the mere idea of katsudon will give you the energy and confidence to succeed.”

It’s…not really that Yuri didn’t know the concept of Pavlov’s dog, but rather that he didn’t really understand what it had to do with the current situation, and now, even after Victor’s explanation, Yuri is still pretty unclear about it.

Still, everyone is nodding at each other and gasping things like, “Oh, yes,” and “I see,” and now Victor is watching him like he himself is some sort of determined scientist, and so Yuri swallows again, one last time, and says, “Itadakimasu.”

:::

No doubt it's just some kind of — cultural — thing. All of the touching, that is, given so freely and so casually. Victor’s squeezing his arm at the rink is something Yuri feels even now as a constriction in his chest.

It _must_ be some kind of cultural thing — well, no — rather — it must be nothing, for Victor to graze fingertips across Yuri’s knuckles and shoulders and lips and the small of his back, careless flutters that number now in the hundreds, which Yuri knows because he has been counting each one, and also scanning the room every time it happens, mortified at the possibility of an amused audience.

But no one seems to find all this touching unusual at all, even though the mere thought of anyone thinking so is enough to make Yuri feel like he’s replaced his face with a pool of lava.

“Eat every little bit,” Victor tells him, smiling, as if the drape of the onsen’s yukata baring one shoulder is nothing he notices at all. By now, everyone has started to drift back to their tasks, taking their animated chatter about him away from him, and leaving Yuri alone, almost.

“I — um — did,” Yuri says, with some confusion. He tilts the bowl in Victor’s direction, and Victor tsks. He swipes a finger across the bottom of the bowl, lifting up a grain of rice that sticks perfectly on the pad of his finger.

Smiling, Victor holds it out.

:::

Yuri really…

Really…

 _Really_ …

Has no excuse.

For what happens next.

Probably, if he were to think of one, it would sound something like, _I-it’s not quite, me, it’s just, I worked so hard, getting into that character, all night —_

The woman in the shine of the playboy's eye, with fluttering skirt and lashes and nimble flirtation made even more potent by the wall her coyness builds between her and everyone else. All night and for one long dance Yuri felt the way she did, breathed the way he knew she’d breathe, and felt, like her, his every motion being traced, by everyone, of course, but by one person in particular.

The point is.

The urge comes to him, as natural and powerful as his made-up _Eros_ narrative, stabbing him straight through. He isn’t sure whether it’s him or her or some brave, ridiculous amalgam of the two of them that does it. Whatever it is, his body moves. Leans, mouth opening, and closing, on Victor’s proffered fingertip.

:::

A beat of silence; then, a beat of unbearable heat. What did he…wait, waitwaitwait, _wait_ , _wh-wh-what did he just —_

Yuri flings himself backward. Victor is smiling, but he can only barely see it through the frantic blur of his vision, his sudden light-headedness, and the steam that he’s sure is pouring out of both of his ears.

“S-s-sorry,” Yuri squeaks, and then, in his thrashing, he hears a _riip_ , and he feels even more faint. Not — _not the costume_ —

“Sorry! I’m apologize! I, no, wait, I — I mean —”

“It's fine, it's fine.” Victor is laughing, with the kind of laughs that are so big he's clenching his stomach and leaning back on one arm to support himself. Soon, he wipes the corner of his eye, and sucks in big breaths, to calm himself.

“Anyway,” he says, “it's about time to take off that costume anyway, isn't it?”

Victor still has a little bit of sake left, in the cup that Yuri's mother brought earlier; with a flourish, he tips it back and downs it. Then Victor adjusts his yukata back over his shoulder, and stands, and holds out a hand to help Yuri up.

“You know, that particular costume is a pain to take off. Let me help you out.”

:::

Victor's expression — that pure, sweet, innocent smile — is something straight out of _On Love_.

 _No,_ Yuri tells himself. _It's not. It's nothing._

It's just how Victor normally is. Nothing to make a big deal out of.

He manages to cool his face, takes Victor's hand, stands and then quickly lets go and fists his hand up, still feeling the warmth in it. The costume’s tear is near Yuri’s stomach, and it’s _enormous,_ Yuri thinks, but Victor waves his hand dismissively. Yuri calls out a thanks to his mother, as if from a distance, and, as if from a distance, his mother calls something back to him.

“Okay,” Yuri answers blandly.

In the mundanity of the inn, Victor's costume feels false on him, and grotesquely over-the-top. He tiptoes toward his room, with Victor following languidly behind. If anyone notices either of them, or thinks anything strange about it, it's not obvious.

 _That's because there's nothing strange. It's nothing,_ Yuri thinks, when Victor's foot crosses the threshold to his room.

 _It's nothing,_ Yuri tells himself, when Victor spins him around and prods at his back until his fingers find the zipper.

 _It's nothing,_ Yuri begs himself to believe when the zipper starts descending between his shoulder blades.

“Are you alright, Yuri?” Victor asks.

“Nothing!” Yuri cries. “I mean — it's nothing — I'm fine, is what I mean. I think that I can handle the rest of it, is what I mean.”

“You think?” Victor asks.

“Y-yeah,” Yuri says. He reaches behind his back, fingers curling for the zipper. He finds it and starts laboring to inch it down, and Victor lets him writhe around like that for a while before gently pushing his hands away.

“I told you it's a pain,” he laughs. The moment Victor touches the zipper again, it continues descending as cleanly as a blade cutting a rink, and the skin of Yuri's back feels ice-cold. He feels goosebumps bloom across his shoulders, and they spread alarmingly across his body as he feels something brush him that's awfully warm. Victor’s fingertips are pressed to Yuri's back, and peel the costume fabric to the sides, widening the V of skin that the unzipped costume exposes.

“Cold?” Victor asks. It’s a murmur.

“N-not…really.” It's the truth, suddenly. Yuri buries his face in his hands, trying to calm it. Victor slips the costume off one shoulder.

And then stops.

“Is…something the matter?” Yuri asks, risking a backward glance.

“No,” Victor says. He sweeps his hair out of his face, and seems unperturbed when every strand slips promptly back into place. “Just looking.”

:::

_“Please look only at me.”_

It’s different, than at the rink, where there were hundreds of people cheering around them. It’s different, too, than when it’s just them and maybe a handful others lounging in the hot springs, clothed even more sparsely than they are now. For some reason Yuri feels even more self-conscious right now, being dressed, in the same costume Victor’s body once occupied. He’s being embraced twice over, by lycra, and pale eyes.

Yuri turns. The walls still bear the holes and nicks from Yuri’s hastily removed posters. Without them, Yuri’s room is neater, and definitely more sane, but still things feel unbearably cluttered, and close. Yuri can hear his own breath, and Victor’s, too. It’s been a while since the competition, but he finds himself straining, just a little, for air.

“Thanks,” he blurts. “For…for eating with me.”

“Of course,” Victor says. “It was your wish, after all.”

 _That’s right,_ Yuri tells himself. _It’s nothing._

Yuri swallows. “And…”

He — he made his assumptions at the rink, but that was him saying it, and suddenly he has to hear it, himself, from Victor. “And, y-you’re staying, right?”

Victor blinks at him, and then smiles. “Of course! How were you thinking I could coach you otherwise?”

“Haha…” Yuri releases the breath he realizes he was holding, and scratches his head. “I don’t know, I guess.”

He’s so ridiculous.

“Don’t worry, Yuri,” Victor says brightly. “I’ll be right by you, all the way until the Grand Prix.”

It’s said to soothe him, probably, but instead Yuri feels all his muscles coil up again. He just came back the rink, practically, but now he can see himself racing back. From his night stand, the sound of his clock ticking sounds like a warning rattle.

He’s so ridiculous.

Victor shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Well,” Victor says. “You can probably handle the rest, so, I’ll see you tomorrow. Unless you need anything else?”

:::

 _Why,_ Yuri wondered, _are you doing this?_

For almost a year now, skating has been a completely worthless endeavor. Nothing came of it, or ever will. Even if he were to rise again, his nerves would simply return, and devour him alive.

_So, why?_

It's not like he wanted it to be this way. He'd mined himself over and over again, for months, and just been unable to wrest free any answers. For the first time now, he felt something glimmering between his ribs, something bright that he was almost too afraid to touch, lest it turn out to be just a discarded wrapper. But...but...

In the dance hall mirror, he let _her_ expression fall to the floor; he set _her_ arms at his sides. But he kept her gaze, and tried to look inside it, through it.

 _All your effort is worthless,_ Yuri thought, coldly. _Pointless._ _It's for nothing. In the end, he’ll leave. This isn’t a pure, sweet, innocent first love._ Eros _is a tragedy for you._

 _He’ll leave,_ Yuri chanted, again, and again, trying to believe it, trying to let it still the dangerous thrum in his chest. _Of course it's fine now, but, w_ _hether it’s now or later, whether I win or not either now or at the Grand Prix, he’ll leave, in the end. He’ll leave, he’ll leave, he’ll leave. And everything will just go back to the way it was before._

And still he practiced until his whole body knew its form, until it howled with it and Yuri could only just manage to drag himself back into his own bed.

But even beneath his own blankets, exhausted beyond measure, his chest continued to thrum.

:::

 _What is_ Eros _to you?_

 _What is_ Eros _?_

 _Why,_ Yuri wonders, _am I doing this?_

The thrumming gets louder, drowning out the sound of Victor sliding open Yuri's door. It escapes his attempts to suppress it — slips right past his fingers, past all logic. It races, with Yuri's desire in its teeth.

“Wait,” Yuri gasps. “Don't go.”

Victor turns, blinking.

Everything ends. Even katsudon at the end is nothing but porcelain. It's not a tragedy. Just a sign of a well-fed stomach.

And.

If there's any tragedy in _Eros_ , it wasn't in the decision that she made.

Yuri holds out his still-sleeved arms, heart pounding.

“I'm…afraid to tear your costume even more,” he manages to say. “C-can…can…you help me?”

:::

Victor stares. Then he beams.

“Of course.”

:::

Victor reaches over Yuri’s shoulders. His hand grazes Yuri’s bare neck; then his fingers curl on the costume’s edge, and drag. The lycra clinches into itself, and the rest of Yuri’s body emerges as if from a wrinkly and an unusually sparkly chrysalis.

“So cold,” Victor remarks, stroking a swath of goosebumps.

“Not…not really,” Yuri murmurs, feebly.

Victor waits for an explanation, but Yuri’s throat knots.

“More?” Victor asks.

“Yeah,” Yuri answers.

More. The fabric continues furling up, down past his ribs now, and his belly. Victor chuckles.

“You really worked hard,” he says, prodding the muscle of the left side of Yuri’s chest. “Though…”

The finger drifts to Yuri’s newly-bared stomach, where the impression that it can make is not particularly shallow, and Yuri grimaces.

“That’s from the katsudon just now,” he mutters. “I told you I gain weight easily. B-but I’ll make it go away.”

“Really? This amount is pretty endearing.” Victor drops the costume, and presses his hands against Yuri’s belly, giving it thoughtful rub. Yuri’s spine feels full with static. Yuri bites his lip, and feels the edge of his bed against the back of his knees. Victor is always touching him, but this is sort of a first, and, he thought that maybe he was just making it up, but, it’s definitely not his imagination now, that Victor’s fingers are even now lower now, and starting to just caress the first of the fine hairs that Yuri has down —

“Hey,” Victor says. “You think katsudon can be blamed for _that_ too?”

:::

“N-no,” Yuri’s mouth says. “That’s…something different. Th-that’s…sorry, I…I, um…”

His voice is practically nothing. He panics.

_I can’t do this after all, this is terrible, I can’t believe I’m, how could I ever have ever thought that I —_

“Yuri.” Victor’s voice cuts through, warmly. Yuri’s face jerks up to look at him, and Victor’s hand cradles his chin. His voice lowers into a murmur, the kind that Yuri hears in every part of his body.

“You were really delicious, you know. Really the most delicious katsudon ever.” His hand smooths lower, closer and closer to Yuri’s erection, which remains shamelessly unflagging despite his incredulousness at the present situation. The slightest movement is all it takes for Victor to touch him, for the back of his knuckles to brush his cock and cause Yuri to swallow, and then release a ridiculous noise when Victor’s hand shifts, and encircles him.

One finger closes, at a time. Victor’s hand feels huge around him, and almost unbearably warm. He squeezes.

“Breathe,” Victor reminds him, beside his ear, and Yuri sucks in a breath, just in time for it all to burst out of it again when Victor draws his lips against Yuri’s neck, just beneath his ear. There’s a sound, and a feeling, unmistakably like a kiss, followed by another, and another. Yuri feels weak. His knees start to quake and when he stumbles back onto his bed, Victor follows over him, as if the motion was something they choreographed.

A couple distracted motions is all it takes for the rest of the costume to get kicked off; then all Yuri feels are his bedsheets, and the sweep of Victor’s yukata across his body, and, against his left knee, Victor’s own leg, bare, and pressed against him.

Victor’s yukata is starting to loosen again over one shoulder, there’s a huge sag in it that exposes Victor’s chest and Yuri sees it for just a moment before Victor lowers over him, and continues kissing him, gently, thoroughly. His ear, the side of his throat, the soft skin beneath his chin, the shudder of his Adam’s apple, the sensitive depression at the base of his neck, again, and again, and —

Yuri moans. It’s a noise he's powerless to prevent, and he feels Victor smile against his skin. Victor’s hand squeezes around his cock again, and then pumps it, gently. A well-placed thumb nudges the head of his cock carefully and Yuri grips his bedsheets and then, with a sort of desperation, Victor’s yukata.

He’s hardly done anything and already Yuri feels the pressure building across his entire body. He can’t — he can’t just let Victor do — all this, without any —

Yuri reaches blindly through the yukata fabric, and then underneath it, fingertips flitting nervously on Victor’s skin and muscle, shying at how much firmer Victor’s body is than his own, and then relishing. He tries kissing him, gingerly, in the same places he himself was kissed, and is surprised at the faint salt of it. Victor stills above him, and Yuri is encouraged by his closed eyes, his slow sigh. Still kissing, Yuri searches gingerly for underwear and is surprised, and then not surprised, to not find it.

He moves before his nerves can stop him — clutches Victor’s cock and then, at Victor’s wince, hastily lightens up.

_Victor’s — I’m — I can’t believe I’m — Victor’s —_

I-it — seems — pretty big? M-maybe, bigger than —? But — but in any case — more importantly — Yuri’s fingers make a circle and he strokes, slowly at first, and then, when Victor doesn’t quite respond, somewhat quickly.

“Oh,” Yuri gasps when Victor puts a hand on his arm. “S-sor —”

Victor kisses his forehead. He says something so quiet that Yuri strains to hear it, only to realize that he can’t understand anyway; it’s Russian. Before Yuri can ask, Victor gently unfurls Yuri’s hand. Then, easing their bodies together, he grabs both of their cocks in his hand.

O-oh — that’s — _that’s_ —

Really close. Really hot. Really — really —

“A-ah —”

Victor murmurs again, and _squeezes_ , and Yuri crumples. His hands grip the yukata, pulling it even further apart in mindless desire for _closer_ , parting his legs around Victor’s waist to allow him near and then pinning them together to keep him there. Victor keeps stroking, steadily, and, and —

How hard he is with desire, for _Yuri_ — the little bit of sweat Yuri can taste as he presses his mouth to Victor’s face — Victor’s groan, and the rhythmic roll of his hips as his pace increases, and increases, and —

_“I’m —”_

Yuri can’t — help it. His pleasure deafens his coyness, his uncertainty. His arms link over Victor’s shoulders and as he climaxes he clutches Victor against him. Yuri’s body rocks even as it empties between them, and Victor shudders, and the silent tremble of his body, evident now that they’re skin-to-skin, makes Yuri thread his fingers in Victor’s pale hair and align their faces and kiss him, right on his gasping mouth.

Victor moans, muffled. His hand jerks, wildly, and Yuri feels heat splash across his belly, almost up to his chest. Above him, Victor shakes, and then collapses, on top of him.

Not out of exhaustion, it seems, because a moment later, when Victor wraps his arms around Yuri and nuzzles his throat, it only seems that he’s stronger and more vehement than usual.

“Yuuuri,” he sings. “Thank you for the meal.”

“O-oh,” Yuri says. “U-um. Yes.”

“And,” Victor says, “for the kiss.”

Yuri clears his throat. “S-sure. Of course.”

“I’ll give you one too,” Victor says. “Okay?”

“Ah…okay.”

Victor takes Yuri’s face in his hands, and gazes. Despite the dim light, his lashes seem to glimmer as his eyes shut.

When their mouths meet this time — there’s no force to it, no particular passion. It’s pure, sweet, innocent. When Victor withdraws, Yuri bites his lip, and then, suddenly, hugs him close again.

There’s no way that the breadth of — of whatever it is overflowing in him could possibly be expressed in words. No way that he could ever find a way for it to leave his body and enter the world and reach its recipient without being muddied in translation. Still, he tries.

“Thank you,” Yuri whispers.

Victor smiles into his hair, embraces him back, puts a little shake into it. Another kiss reaches Yuri’s brow. Then, he says, “We have a long way to go still. There’s a lot to improve about your technique. How about it? Do you think you’ll be able to get up early tomorrow to start working on it?”

“A-ah — yeah — yes!”

 _Of course,_ Yuri thinks, helplessly. _I’d do anything for you._

And…

For the first time, in a long time —

 _I'll do it for me, too_.

He grasps for the thrumming in his chest, closing his hand on it, feeling it breathe between his fingers. It sinks into his skin and muscle, into his every vein, and deeper.

Later, as he drifts into sleep, he can almost hear an echo of music.

**Author's Note:**

> …thank you for reading! let me know if you liked it :')
> 
> …also, did you know there’s a figure skating move called “death spiral”?? whoa??!


End file.
